Top 10 Free Online OCR Tools

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As per Wikipedia, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the mechanical or electronic conversion of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text.

So an OCR tool is for you to extract the text from an image. For example, the following is an image of the text "I Love You!" in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and French:

To get the text, you can write them down with these online virtual keyboards, instead, you can check out the following top 10 free online OCR tools:

1. ABBYY FineReader Online

After registration, you can upload an image or PDF file, select up to 3 languages, and choose an output format, then ABBYY FineReader Online will convert your file to text.

2. Free OCR

On the Free OCR website, you can upload an image or PDF file (only first page), select the language, enter the CAPTCHA code, and click on the "Send file" button, then your file will be converted to text.

3. Free Online OCR

Free Online OCR only supports English, you can upload a PDF or image file, and select an output format, then you can extract the text from the file.

4. Google Docs

Log in your Google Docs, select all the following 3 items:

Convert Uploaded files to Google Docs format,

Convert text from uploaded PDF and image files,

Confirm setting before each upload.

And upload your image, select the language, then you can view the result.

5. i2OCR

On the i2OCR website, you can upload your image or enter an image URL, and pick up a language, then you can preview and download the result.

6. New OCR

New OCR is available for you to upload an image, PDF and even compressed file from your computer, or by entering its URL, then you can choose one language, click the "Preview" button to preview the file, and click the "OCR" button to download the result.

7. OCR Convert

On the OCR Convert website, you can upload an image or PDF file, select a language, and click the "Process" button, then you can convert and download the result as a TXT file.

8. OCR Online

After registration, you can choose a language, select an output format, and upload an image or PDF file, then you can covert your file to text.

By the way, OCR Online is only available for you to upload 5 pages (images) per week free.

9. OCRextrACT

On the OCRextrACT website, you can select a language, and upload a PDF or image file, then you can view the result on the website or download it as a TXT file.

10. Online OCR

On the Online OCR website, you can upload an image, choose one language, select the output format, enter the verified code, and click the "Recognize" button, then you can preview and download the result.

For the differences on supported languages, input and output formats among the above 10 OCR tools, you can check out the following table:

OCR Tools

Languages

Input

Output

Sign-up

1

ABBYY FineReader Online

42

JPG, TIF, PCX, DCX, BMP, PNG, GIF, DJVU, DJV and PDF

DOC, DOCX, XLS, XLSX, PDF, RTF, TXT and ODT

Yes

2

Free OCR

29

JPG, GIF, TIFF and BMP

Webpage

No

3

Free Online OCR

En only

PDF, GIF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF and PNG

DOC, PDF, TXT and RTF

No

4

Google Docs

38

Any Image formats and PDF

ODT, PDF, RTF, TXT, DOC and HTML

Yes

5

i2OCR

33

TIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, PBM, PGM and PPM

DOC

No

6

New OCR

58

JPEG, JFIF, PNG, GIF, BMP, PBM, PGM, PPM, PCX, etc.

TXT, DOC, ODT, RTF, PDF and HTML

No

7

OCR Convert

35

JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF and PDF

TXT

No

8

OCR Online

153

JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF and PDF

PDF, DOC, RTF and TXT

Yes

9

OCRextrACT

42

PDF, TIFF, PNG, JPG, BMP and PBM

TXT

No

10

Online OCR

32

JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF and GIF

DOC, XLS and TXT

No

Although most of these 10 free online OCR tools support multiple languages, none of them can convert the image of text in 5 different languages, and what is more, they are not good enough to recognize the handwritten text yet.